Labor of Love
by Demyrie
Summary: TFA, second season spoiler. Sari can’t come to terms with her new self: betrayed by the man she called 'father' and helpless to heal herself, crotchety Autobot Ratchet comes forward with some words of wisdom and a love redefined. SUPER-FLUFF! Sigh.


A/N: I kinda cried and squirmed while writing this. Yep.

…I have a horrible penchant for Ratchet-Sari bonding, I've realized. It's not creepy, it's SWEET! I bet Optimus could technically tell Sari all this stuff, but I'm so disenchanted with that 'bot. SO BORING, CAN'T TAKE HIS LIPS SERIOUSLY. RATCHET WINS THE SHOW.

This spawned from the darling Eno asking me how I would handle Sari's cyborg-self-realization situation, if I were a writer on the show. My first answer was "PAAAAH, I have no IDEA! Haha! I could never do that!", and then the insidious train of thought jumped me in the night. I'm so glad it assaulted me, because now I have tooth cavities!

En-joi!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Labor of Love

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Even with Megatron temporarily out of the picture, the Autobot base had yet to relax.

There was a new conflict within their ranks, but it did not stem from the warriors themselves: on the contrary, the Transformers had become quiet and uncertain, and spent an inordinate amount of time skirting a certain part of the base. Sari's room. The little creature was staying at the warehouse again, even though she technically had a home now, and a father. Therein lay the problem.

She hadn't seen him for two weeks. He _came_ to the Autobot base with clenched hands and a sleepless face, and left with his wet face in those same hands, but she did not see him. She would not. Could not. Not after what he'd done to her.

Isaac Sumdac, now a stranger, had ruined her life: or implied through calculated years of _lies_ that she had one at all.

For two weeks, it was the same dance. Everyone had tried to comfort her. Everyone had tried giving their condolences or simply sitting and listening—which would have worked, if Sari was willing to speak.

All of the Autobots had tried to understand her, or open a dialogue… but where they delicately failed relating to an organic and her eclectic culture even before this crisis, they proved even more inept at approaching a robotic creature who _used_ to be organic, now horrified with herself and that culture she still craved—that culture and identity that she lost with the realization that she was never _real_.

Part of it wasn't their fault. Bumblebee to Optimus to Bulkhead, none of them could imagine being upset at being robotic or inorganic. It was all they had ever been; their natural state. But Sari had lost hers in a single wrenching moment of black exostructure and sparking wires, and was in mental, emotional, physical and cultural limbo. She was no one: a blank slate.

For a blank slate, she spent an alarming amount of time barricaded in her room throwing things around.

Ratchet had watched her agony in his steady, knowing way from the proverbial back of the room. Although it wasn't exactly analogous, he'd known many a 'bot to crumple under a personal identity crisis like hers: an Autobot who found out that he was a wiped and repainted 'Con, for example. His intense patriotism didn't even matter: the fact destroyed him. He didn't trust himself, didn't trust his wiring or his canons or his alt-mode. The bulky mech was convinced that he had deceit programmed into his substructure, and became less and less operational. Eventually drove himself to full-scale malfunction.

Ratchet couldn't save him. He'd tried, but he couldn't, because the 'bot had done it to himself out of fear.

In that way, the mech's body did betray him: being violently redefined takes away all reference point, and makes a creature wonder whether 'people' are _made_ or cultured. Free will, and all. Ratchet knew how powerful a personal redefinition could be because he knew that a being's base components meant a lot more than people thought.

The backwards bunch of repairbots he called a team were still young. They didn't quite _know_ what she was going through: Ratchet wasn't content to lurk around her closed door like they were, and often chased them off for badgering her. He even got into a vocal-match with Optimus about it, who leaked on and on about what was best for the kid. Yanked Ratchet's wires the wrong way, that did. Their intentions were good, though, so the medibot couldn't find too much fault in it—especially when he was the one storming Sari's room at the moment, shattered door hanging from his clenched servo.

Two weeks was a long time, and to see their little Earth guide so broken annoyed (and destroyed) him. He'd found the fracture, and he meant to patch it. It was his _job_, for Spark's sake, and he _worked for a living_.

"You takin' visitors, Ms. Sumdac?" Ratchet growled, tossing the door into a corner of her mismatched habitat. It crunched and clattered, but Sari was already up: she had bolted up when Ratchet tore it off in the first place, scattering all the junk behind it (junk like furniture and super-cute plastic stereos and the tire from her beloved tire-swing because it didn't _mean_ anything anymore, robots didn't have a _reason_ to have all this stuff: they didn't need anything but electrical outlets and oil and they _certainly_ didn't need _fathers_), and flinched into the corner of her bed when he tossed it down.

"What do you want?" She whispered. Her face was dry for the moment, but her eyes were constantly red, and her little body—exostructure—was wilting. She gazed at Ratchet with a complex, bone-deep misery, drawing her blanket up over her chest.

"I wanted t'see you."

The Medibot stepped into the destroyed room, optics flicking to either side. She'd done a lot of 'work' in two weeks: the place was hardly recognizable for all the debris. The only thing still in one piece was her bed. Sari made a low, hurt sound, then furiously flung the coverlet off the bed, kicking at it until it was a healthy five feet away.

"Well get an eyeful, 'cos I'll be here for the rest of my mechanical _life_."

Ratchet sighed all the way from his pedes, but didn't shake his head. Stepping as lightly as he could with his aged equilibrium chip, he crossed the room and lowered himself down by the head of her bed, making the mattress jump with his impact. Sari, tensely curled into the ratted nest of cloth, didn't respond. Ratchet looked at the crumpled little human—cyborg—and narrowed his blue optics, placing one hand on her headboard.

"S'cuse me if I overstep my purpose here, but I've been bitin' my vocal chip for a good long time about this," the medibot began brusquely. "Why've you got your wires in a knot, kid?"

It used to be an amusing saying, but now it actually applied. Sari shook on her bed, fingers clenching into her yellow boots.

"I'm a robot," she whispered through her teeth, voice trembling with the ultimate betrayal. Because Ratchet shouldn't have been stupid enough to _ask_.

"What does that mean? A _robot_. You're obviously upset about it," the grizzled mech half-mused, then shrugged. "We're robots, too. Autonomous mechanical organisms: don't see us leaking about it. S'a good way to be, in my opinion, so long's you remember to keep your tailpipe clean."

Sari hated his easy tone. She hated the fact he'd invaded her space—ripped her _door_ off—or that he was talking to her or that he was even _alive_. But robots… weren't alive. They were something else. Something less; something artificial. She was artificial.

Rearing up onto her hands and knees, Sari shouted at her friend and teacher:

"I used to be _human_! I can't just be a b-bucket of bolts now, it's not _right_!"

Ratchet turned to face her, ancient, scratch-rimmed mouth thinning alongside his optics.

"So, what—we're good enough to _play_ with, live with and protect your primitive little vegetation-ball, but not good enough to _be_? That insults me, kid, that you'd think being a calculated product of programs and wires instead of a vulnerable mess of cells and impulses is a step down the ladder."

Sari fell back to her haunches as the Medibot leaned toward her, vocals low and solemn with a pulse of acid.

"Doesn't make _us_ seem too vital, does it? Almost like we're toys, huh?" Ratchet growled, regarding her icily. "Or _pets_?"

It was faintly ironic, Ratchet knew, as organics were pets for Cybertronians. Dumb things, enslaved by their impulses and 'instincts', given food and drink and attention. Internally, every bot was still getting used to that paradigm-shift on Earth, but Ratchet had it down: and managed to hit Sari's heart.

Even if she didn't care whether she lived (non-lived) or died at this point, she still loved her friends. She gasped, hand twitching towards him.

"No, you're n-not. You're _not_!" She searched his face for any sign of anger, then let her hand drop when he merely looked at her, intelligent blue optics whirring softly. Waiting. Once again, Sari curled in on herself, mouth pressing against her shoulder as everything washed over her again.

"I just… you don't know what it means to be human, Ratchet. _Human_," she repeated softly, feeling the word—the beautiful flexible, soulful concept—knock around her compartmentalized, wire-laden insides. No longer accepted. No longer _compatible_. She closed her eyes. "It's… really special. Something you can't get anywhere else: it means a lot of things. I've… lost that."

Metal-based body crumbling inward on whatever she could call a soul, Sari hiccupped miserably and began to cry. She cried because part of her still believed she was human, because crying was what humans did… when they were sad. That's what she'd told Bumblebee and Bulkhead, and it was still right.

Now, in the dark of the two weeks since she'd _found out_, she had drawn blood—drawn _some_ reddish fluid, hated and feared the alien entity her body had become—while probing hatefully for the plastic-sealed tubes that filled her _optics_ with the lie.

Sari sobbed, clutching her falsely wet face.

"I n-never had it."

Ratchet watched her silently. He knew about this… organic whimsy: some sort of body-soul concept outside the soul. Indescribable and individual. He knew it because it wasn't so foreign to him or any other being in existence, organic or inorganic. Every race had that same ungraspable brand of inarticulate wisdom and joy of simply, self-awarely _being_. Every one.

His processor would give out entirely if he rebooted as a human. He would lose so much: not just advantage, skill and size, but he would lose his Cybertronian Spark with the switch. Even if he had a 'Soul' in exchange, it would never fill the void left by that rich, warm energy. That boundless concept of self: his self, his body, his identity. He knew that.

He could tell Sari, but he didn't. He could tell her that he wouldn't give up his inorganic self for anything, nor would he be in her situation for all the Energon in the universe—except if it was to relieve her pain. He could tell her that it would never be the same, and that, unless she was willing to re-imagine her world and her soul, she could be at odds with herself for her entire existence and die a non-entity.

He didn't.

"I'm… sorry I can't compute it. I'm sorry I can't understand what you've lost, or how you don't quite fit together anymore," Ratchet began heavily. He reached out a single digit and touched the little creature, stroking her hunched, trembling back. She shook and coughed, keening into her knees. "I guess it's a… human-thing. But the important thing to remember is that you still _have_ pieces: they'll fit again someday. You'll build yourself up again."

She shook her head mutely, tears and fluids dripping from her face. Ratchet looked at her mournfully, something clenching in his chassis—something around his tender Spark.

"But… Sari, what I'm tryin' to say is…" He cleared his throat. "Don't take it out on your father. He's had a hard enough time already and he's just tryin' to get back in your life--"

Sari wrenched herself away from his warm servo with a rage-filled sound, tear-filled eyes blazing fiercely out of her wet face as she glared at him.

"_He lied to me_! And he's—he's not even my dad!" She shrieked, dissolving anew into thick sobs. "He m-made me belie—he _made me_! I hate him!"

Ratchet did not comfort her. Ratchet did not recant or placate. Despite her fresh agony, Ratchet did not move to give her succor.

Instead, Ratchet rose sharply to his knees and crashed down in front of her bed, shaking the room and shaking _Sari_. She screamed, but the Medibot cut short her attempt to thrash off the bed by trapping her with his servo and fixing her with his blazing blue optics, nearly shaking with ire mere feet from her face.

"You actually think that because he _made you_—built you from the ground up, processed long and hard about every nut and bolt and interfacing panel in that brilliant little chassis of yours so you could live the best life possible—you think that means he cares _less_ about you than if you fell outta some femme's body and he spent the next eight years makin' sure you didn't crack your organic skull open?"

Sari made a hurt, confused sound, but Ratchet shook his head, baring his teeth.

"Everything in my world, kid, is a conscious miracle. Every beautiful thing that's alive, it's built from the ground up, with purpose. We _work_ for our miracles—you organics take too much for granted," Ratchet snarled. "Miracles—_life_—happens while you _recharge_, and you reboot and scratch your head and walk along. No, it doesn't _matter_ to you, because you haven't seen what its like when nature isn't self-motivated. I'd say we love our world a trillion times more than you love yours, just because we know, down to the bolts and screws, how much it's worth."

Carefully, optics never leaving her stricken face, Ratchet touched Sari on her back.

"Time."

Her stomach.

"Energy."

Her forehead.

"Thought."

Her chest.

"Devotion, most of all."

His finger stayed there, closest to the flaming sentient core, searching and stabilizing her. Autobot Ratchet felt the blind, anxious hammering of Sari's unknown but life-filled insides, and Unhuman Sari felt the steady conviction of Ratchet's Spark. The Medibot looked at her, then, and Sari knew what ancient silent Cybertronian tears _felt_ like.

Everyone could cry, out of joy or sadness.

"Reboot, Sari," Ratchet murmured, letting his servo fall softly across her lap. "Issac Sumdac loves you more than anything in this world, organic or inorganic or anywhere in-between. The proof is not only that you're standing there, in all your bits and pieces, but that you have the moral and emotional programming capacity to call his love into question. You're not a toy. You're not an experiment. You are his _daughter_."

After a long, slow moment, Ratchet smiled at the wide-eyed little girl, giving her a small nudge.

"_And_ you're one of us. It may be different, but I'd say that's a pretty damn good start."

Sari couldn't speak.

Even she knew the basic contradiction in that concept, but she simply could not speak in front of Ratchet, or to Ratchet in the wake of his words and touch. His message. After she fought the tremble enough to open her mouth, it hung there for several minutes, until she bowed her head and, consumed head to toe with the surge of feeling, _blushed_.

Now she knew what she had _felt_ all along: robots were people, too. Sometimes they were… the best people she had ever known. Her best friends, in fact. She had a lot ahead of her, that was certain, some of it weird, some of it uncomfortable… but she still had her mechanical family. She still had… her father.

She still had her one true creator, who dreamed of her before she was even born.

Sari wiped her cheeks, then wiped them again, slowly, soaking in all of the complex sensations it provoked from her… neural circuitry. Dampness, temperature, texture: all with a brimming completeness of function and detail. Thought-soaked, expert. A strange, choked giddiness almost took her, but Ratchet's digit captured her chin, raising it so he could lay stern optics on her face.

"You register me?" He asked softly, searching the crimson eyes that gleamed under her matted hair. Sari nodded. When he withdrew with an acknowledging sound, she curled away shyly, then looked up at the ancient Medibot with a tender smile: her face was still wet, but her slowly-returning spark shone under it, giving her mouth a mischievous sharpness.

"What… should I be called?"

Ratchet arched his brow, blindsided by the half-coy question.

"Huh?"

"I'm an… Autobot now, right? All of you have cool names. I should have one too," she insisted, turning her eyes up in thought. Whatever happened in her head, it sent yet another pulse of _Sari_ rushing into her brightening face. "Something like… DeathAxe, or BadBeam. Or HeartCrusher."

The crusty Autobot seemed to consider the option (after a brief, well-concealed snort at her suggestions), picking at his chin.

"Hm. I've got one. Fits you perfect," he began after a brief, intent silence. He turned, raising a servo toward her. "How about… Sari Sumdac? Sari, for short."

He looked at her like she was one of the most precious, unique things in existence, and she blushed all over again, feeling that exquisite rush of _completeness_ flood her world again.

They loved her no matter who or what she was. They loved _her_ best, and didn't that define a person: love?

"Ratchet?"

"Yes, Autobot Sari Sumdac?" Ratchet answered attentively, solemnly trying out the new name in all its grandeur. She couldn't help but smile.

"Will you teach me how to be a robot?" She whispered.

Ratchet half-smiled and lurched to his pedes, picking his way out of the room and grunting over his shoulder:

"Eat your vegetation and quit talkin' back."

It was then that Sari realized her father had taken care of that, too. It was simpler than she realized: robot or human, Isaac Sumdac had taught her how to be _good_, and that was all she needed.

That, and love.


End file.
